Skip to main content
Main

Excellent Buckwheat Cakes

Buckwheat cakes made with buckwheat flour, wheat flour, milk, yeast, salt, and water, baked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Buckwheat and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Excellent Buckwheat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the salt, yeast, and flours together.

  2. Add the warm milk and water.

  3. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

  4. Cover the mixture.

  5. Let rise overnight until full of bubbles.

Cook

  1. Heat the griddle to a moderate temperature.

  2. Pour batter onto the griddle.

  3. Cook until light and spongy.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Buckwheat + wheattop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Buckwheat + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buckwheat + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leaving the batter bubbly and light.
Buckwheat flour
Forms the main body of the batter and gives the cakes their earthy flavour.
Wheat flour
Adds some gluten, helping the batter hold its structure while it rises.
Warm fresh milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the batter become smooth and pourable.

The step that matters

Let rise overnight until full of bubbles. The yeast needs time to ferment the flour and release gas. Rising too briefly leaves the cakes dense rather than light and spongy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Wheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes